


Snow Drift

by DarkNymfa



Series: DP Ficlet Collection [7]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Identity Reveal, Snow, Snowball Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24238972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkNymfa/pseuds/DarkNymfa
Summary: The snowball fight might not have ended the way they'd expected it to.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jack Fenton & Maddie Fenton
Series: DP Ficlet Collection [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749379
Comments: 10
Kudos: 229





	1. Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't been writing a lot recently because I started school again so I'm a little rusty, but I figured I would take a stab at some prompts over on Tumblr again. Here's the first, by an anonymous asker: _I adore reveal fics, so would could you do with "reveal" and "snow"? Bonus points if it's silly_
> 
> Admittedly it's not quite as silly as I had intended, because I find it kinda tough to do a reveal fic from the POV of the people finding out without referring to how messed up that whole thing is but, well, it hits the other two points?

Maddie laughed as a snowball whizzed past her head. Her fingers, protected by the thick material of her jumpsuit, dug through the snow to make one of her own.

“He’s gotten good at this!” her husband exclaimed, cheerily. “It’s like he’s got a never-ending hoard over there!”

“We’ll get him,” she told him, voice determined. “Sooner or later he’ll run out, and we outnumber him.”

Another snowball flew by them as she finished hers. Spotting the perfect opportunity, she stood up from behind her barrier, winding back her arm.

As the projectile left her hand, another hit her in the face, however. She stumbled back, crouching behind her protection again.

“Missed me!” Danny taunted from the other side of the fight.

She grumbled, ducking lower to scrape together more snow. “We need a better plan.”

Jack hummed an acknowledgment, eyes darting around the clearing they were in. Then his eyes lit up. “I’ve got an idea! Cover me!”

“Cover you? Jack, what--”

He darted away before she could finished her sentence. Cursing, she balled her handful of snow. It wasn’t a _great_ snowball, but it would do its job.

Maddie waited until she saw Danny pop up, then lobbed the haphazard snowball at him. It must’ve caught him off-guard, because he startled and dropped his own.

Danny swore, turning around and starting to duck behind his own cover. Looking for Jack, if she had to guess. She couldn’t give him the chance.

Quickly she scooped up more snow. She might not know what Jack had thought of, but his plans were always brilliant, if unconventional. If he wanted her to keep Danny distracted, she would.

The two of them kept it up for a little while, exchanging snowballs. Behind Danny, she could see Jack stealthily moving around. Or, well, as stealthy as he could get, since he was wearing bright orange as usual. To keep him out of Danny’s sight, and to distract her son even further, she started moving as well. Slowly, but surely, they were cornering him, and he didn’t even know.

She saw Jack scrape together a huge heaping of snow, and threw one last snowball to keep Danny distracted _just_ a moment longer. They had gotten very close by now; Jack was almost directly behind their son.

Crouching low, she watched Jack dump the armful of snow onto Danny. She was expecting a jubilant cheer, an exclamation of excitement.

Instead she heard a yelp from Danny – not entirely unexpected – and a matching noise from her husband.

Spurred into action, she covered the last of the distance between her and Danny in a few steps, jumping over the snowy barrier he’d formed.

Behind it, she found her husband staring wide-eyed at their son, expression twisted into something weird. And Danny… Danny was covered in the snow Jack had just dumped onto him, his hair so extensively covered with snowflakes that it looked white, an undersized snowball in his hand.

Danny’s eyes darted from Jack to her, and she froze at the sight of them. They looked… odd, somehow. They were still that blue she loved so much, but something about them felt… weird. Too cold, too icy… It made his entire face look just slightly off.

“Uh…” Danny said, eventually. His fingers twitched around the snowball, and she immediately zeroed in on his bare fingers, tinged slightly blue with cold.

“Young man!” she snapped at him, racing over to knock the snow out of his hand. “What do you think you’re doing? Why aren’t you wearing gloves?!”

“I’m-- I didn’t like them?” he tried, feebly, as he attempted to wrench his wrist out of her grip again. “It’s not that cold!”

She shot him a disbelieving look. “Your fingers are turning blue, Danny. We’re going home to warm you up right now. Get in the RV.”

“But-- But--” He looked over at Jack, as if expecting the man to talk her out of this. Quite frankly, she wasn’t sure why he hadn’t interfered sooner, but he definitely wouldn’t side with Danny on this.

Realizing the same, Danny sighed and slumped, then nodded at her. “Alright, fine.”

Confident that she’d convinced him, she let him go. She watched him move to the RV for a moment, then stepped closer to Jack. Seeing that his expression hadn’t changed, she wrapped her hand around his limp one, leaning against him.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Jack heaved out a sigh, looking tired and weary. “Mads… I saw--” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I saw.”

“Something about Danny?”

“No. Well, yes.” Jack made a face. “His eyes… didn’t you see?”

She thought back. Sure, they had looked a little weird, but that was just the lighting. Right? “Well, they looked a little icy, but--”

“They were glowing,” he interrupted her, staring into the direction that Danny had gone. “I saw, Maddie. They were glowing blue, like a ghost.”

“Our son isn’t a ghost, Jack,” she said sternly. “We’ve gone over this before. Just because they’re acting a little strange doesn’t mean that they’ve been _replaced_.”

“I never said he was replaced.” Finally he turned to look at her, looking haunted. “It’s Danny. I’m sure of it, Mads. But I’m also sure of what I saw.”

She met his eyes, pressing against him a little closer. “Jack, honey, all sorts of things could’ve made it look like his eyes were glowing. You know snow makes things look a little strange.”

“But that wasn’t all I saw,” he said, and she felt her world grind to a halt at his heavy tone.

“What else did you see?” she asked him, almost before he’d finished his own sentence.

Jack heaved out another sigh, dragging his eyes back towards Danny. “The snowballs, Mads. Didn’t I say, just before this, that it seemed like he had a never-ending supply of them?”

“Yes, but I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“He was making them, Maddie.” After a long pause, he seemed to realize that she didn’t see anything strange about this, because he added, “Making them fully-formed, I mean. Created the snow right in his bare hands.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking back of how none of the snow around Danny had been disturbed, despite how much snow he must’ve thrown at her. About how he hadn’t noticed how cold it was, about how his fingers had gone blue with cold without him ever noticing.

He “didn’t like” his gloves. Because they would make it harder to form snow, probably. Maybe they were too warm, even, but then why didn’t the coat bother him?

“Oh,” she said again, turning her eyes from Jack to the RV in the distance. Danny stood next to it, clearly staring at them, hands in his pockets. Must be getting impatient.

“How long? How long has our son been a ghost? How have we never noticed?”

Jack shrugged, listlessly, also looking at Danny. “Must’ve been forever. Remember the Ghost Finder, back when he started high school? It picked up on him, I’m sure.”

“And the Ghost Gabber…” Her eyes widened as realization struck. “All those times our inventions malfunctioned over the years… God, Jack, he’s been-- _all this time_?”

“No wonder his grades dropped. He got worse at focusing, at behaving well. But he still tries so hard…” Jack sniffled. “He’s fighting his nature, just for…”

“For us,” she finished for him. “Even though we’ve been telling him all this times how much we hate ghosts, how we want to tear them apart and experiment on them. How they’re good for nothing, and disgusting, and… And he still fought back his ghostly instincts, just to stay?

“But what could’ve happened to him?” she asked, trying to sort through her memories. “It must’ve happened sometime between middle school and high school, but what--”

“The Portal,” Jack said, grimly. “We finished the Portal, but it didn’t work. Then he had an _accident_ with it, and then it worked.”

“Oh God.” She shivered, entirely unrelated to the cold. “God, Jack.”

“I know.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her arm comfortingly. “I know, Mads. I can’t believe it, but…”

“It makes so much sense.” She leaned against him. “But if it happened with the Portal. God, Sam and Tucker must’ve seen. And Jazz _has_ to know, too. Remember when she started being so smothering towards him, so caring, all of a sudden? And insisted we were wrong about ghosts?”

He hummed. “And no one told us. Because… because they were scared of how we would react. Because they thought we hate ghosts more than we love our family.”

“I know.” She wished dearly she didn’t. “God, Jack, I know.”

“Man…” He huffed, then pulled his arm away from her shoulders to wipe over his face instead. “This snowball fight really went downhill, huh?”

She laughed, the sound fragile and thick with unshed tears. “A real Pyrrhic victory.”

“Well, let’s go make it into something better.” He straightened himself up, eyes still on their son in the distance. “Let’s make sure he knows how much we love him.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking at Danny too. The boy still hadn’t wiped the snow from his hair, the strands looking entirely white from this far. He looked… very familiar like this. “Hey, wait.”

“Hm?” Jack paused, turning to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at him,” she insisted, stepping up next to him. “With the snow in his hair, doesn’t that remind you of someone?”

Jack looked, and she could see, clear as day, when he realized too. “I’ll be damned.”

“All this time,” she agreed, looking at Danny as well. “All this time he’s been a ghost hunter too.”

He laughed, hesitantly but hopeful. “God, and he doesn’t even know how proud we are of him.”

“Well.” She stepped forward, dragging Jack along. “Let’s go make sure he knows.”


	2. Avalanche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny was a ghost. They knew this. He, apparently, didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation to Snow, as prompted by mostlikelynothuman! And also asked for by various other people, haha. I'm kinda glad, actually, because I had initially planned for Snow to be a full reveal, but I didn't end up going there because I didn't want it to end up too long!

“Danny,” Maddie said, gently, as they approached him. He’d been watching them the whole time. Since Jack had caught him in the act of forming a snowball with his ghost powers, really.

It was painful, seeing his own son look at him with such clear suspicion. With so little trust.

God, they’d really messed this up, hadn’t they?

“Yeah?” Danny eventually replied, warily. “I thought we were in a hurry? What was taking so long?”

“We were just…” Maddie looked over at him, but he had nothing to offer and shrugged. “Just… talking.”

“About what?” he asked, now even more openly suspicious.

Jack stepped closer to Danny, but stopped when the boy flinched back. Rather than wrap an arm around his shoulders like he really wanted, Jack held out his hands. Showed him that he was unarmed, that he didn’t mean harm.

“About how proud we are of you, Danny-boy.” He made sure to pour all his love, his care, his adoration, into his words. He wasn’t sure if ghosts could feel positive emotions like they could feel negative, but _god_ , he wanted his boy to know how much he meant those words. “You’ve done so well, and we’re so, _so_ proud of you.”

“Oh,” Danny said, weakly, pressed against the RV. “I-- _oh_.”

This time, he didn’t flinch away when Jack reached for him. He curled his arm around the boy’s narrow shoulders, pulling him against his warm side. His hair was still white with snow, and he idly brushed some of it out, leaving it a mix of black and white.

“No matter what, we love you, Danny.” He could feel the boy shaking against his side, and he wondered how genuine the emotion was. How diluted were Danny’s emotions? How much of his boy was left? “You’re our son. You’ll always be our son.”

“You’ve done so well,” Maddie added, stepping closer so she could join the hug. “You must’ve been so scared, and it must’ve been so hard, but still you’ve done so well. We’re so proud of you, Danny.”

“Mom,” the boy stuttered, shaking between them, “D-Dad.”

“Shh,” Maddie shushed, one hand nestled in his white-black hair. “Shh, it’s okay now. We’re here. You’ll be okay. It’ll all be better now.”

They pressed closer to each other; Danny trapped in-between him and Maddie, like they could keep him safe from everything that had happened to him in the last few years.

“I-- I’m sorry.” Danny sniffled, trying to covertly wipe a hand past his eyes. “I’m sorry for not telling you. I-- I--”

“Shh.” Jack rubbed Danny’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We understand, Danny. You must’ve been so scared. Being a ghost, after all the things we’ve said – and continued to say.”

“I-- Yeah.” The boy huffed out a laugh, his breath cold against Jack’s cheek, and the man spared the tiniest thought to wonder about Danny’s ability to play human. How far did it extend? How had it fooled them for so long? “Yeah, it was… It was a whole thing.”

“It’ll be better now, sweetie, we promise.” Maddie looked at Danny, her eyes as watery as Jack’s felt. “We’ll help you figure this out, okay? Whatever you’ve been doing to stay true to yourself despite… despite becoming a ghost, we’ll help. Okay?”

“Um.” Danny blinked, then wiped a hand past his eyes with more force. “Wait, what do you mean?”

Jack felt a chill crawl over his spine, completely unrelated to the cold.

Maddie glanced over at him, but must’ve seen that he would be no help, because she settled for trying to explain herself. “The… The staying true to yourself? That you haven’t changed, haven’t become malevolent, despite what happened?”

“Why would I… become malevolent?” Danny frowned, looking between them. “I mean, I guess ghosts tend to be a bit fickle, but I’m not…”

His eyes widened. “Oh. You think I’m… _Oh_.”

“We think you’re… what?” Jack hesitantly asked, hoping that this wasn’t going the way he thought it was. If Danny believed that he wasn’t really a ghost, if he’d gotten this far by _pretending_ , blowing the secret could be disastrous.

Danny shook his head, then covered it with his hands and groaned loudly. “I can’t believe-- I should’ve _known_ , dammit.”

“Language, young man,” Maddie corrected, then looked startled at having done so. Danny rolled his eyes, but it seemed to have broken him out of his mood again, at least.

“You think I’m… dead?” he guessed, cocking his head. They nodded, and he nodded back. “Yes, well, I’m not.”

Maddie glanced over at Jack, and he grimaced back. He didn’t know how to deal with this. How do you tell a ghost that he’s dead, that he’s a ghost, without risking him turning violent?

“Danny, sweetie,” Maddie finally tried, “You have ghost powers.”

“Well, yeah.” Danny raised one hand to his neck, starting to rub it in that way he’d always done, ever since he was young. “But I’m not a ghost, not really.”

Jack raised a skeptical eyebrow at the boy, and he started spluttering immediately.

“I’m not, I swear! It’s-- Alright so it’s kinda complicated and I don’t really understand it because the only guy who’s got the same going on is a _dick_ , but--”

“Language!” Maddie snapped again.

Danny waved a dismissive hand, then picked up right where he’d left off. “Alright, so the other guy is a bastard who refuses to share. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not really a ghost. I’m only _half_ ghost.”

“Half?” Jack reluctantly asked, his heart clenching at how frantic Danny looked. God, had his boy really constructed this whole lie, just so he could pretend he wasn’t a ghost? Was this what he’d told Sam, and Tucker, and Jazz, to make them believe that he wasn’t hurting?

If Jack figured out what bastard had made Danny believe this, or god, who might’ve even made it up in the first place, they were gonna have _words_.

“Well, yeah!” Danny managed to wrench himself out of the hug, which had loosened over the conversation, and moved a few steps away. He gestured at himself, but Jack wasn’t sure what they were supposed to see. “See, totally human like this! Well, okay, not completely 100% human, but mostly!”

“Danny--” Maddie said, her voice heavy with emotion.

“No, no,” the boy interrupted her, holding up his hands. They were still red with cold, starting to turn blue near the tips of his fingers. “I just gotta-- Wait, you’ll understand it if you see it. Jazz did too!"

“See what?” Jack asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer. Danny and Phantom were one, they were pretty sure of that, but that didn’t _mean_ anything. Ghosts didn’t necessarily have set appearances. Danny could’ve made two distinct forms for himself, especially if he thought he was something ridiculous as _half-ghost_.

“This!” Danny exclaimed as a white spark burst from his body. It circled around his body, forming a halo, searingly bright and almost impossible for Jack to look at. The light seemed to sweep over Danny, replacing his thick jacket and loose pants with an oh-so familiar black jumpsuit.

God, and how often had he and Maddie wondered about how familiar Phantom’s suit seemed? How often had they looked at it, its design that exactly matched their own, and not recognized it?

“See?” Danny gestured at himself again, his boots as white as they snow they were buried in, his black suit stark against the backdrop. “And now I’m mostly a ghost! But still not 100%, just I wasn’t 100% human in that form!”

Jack shared a pained look with Maddie, a silent conversation on how to tackle this. They couldn’t… They couldn’t let their son lie to himself like this, right? Even if he was… Even if he likely would be hurt, knowing the truth. A white lie, an untruth, would only hurt more. Right?

“Danny,” Jack finally said, as gently as he could. “Son. Who told you… Who told you you were half-ghost?”

“I, uh…” Danny shrugged, his eyebrows scrunching together like he hadn’t expected them to so easily accept the whole Phantom thing. “I mean, I came up with it, initially? Or, well, me and Sam and Tucker, I guess. Since things didn’t quite check out? But I got plenty of confirmation after. Just ask the ghosts, or Plasmius.”

“Plasmius?” Maddie repeated uncertainly. Jack frowned at this, too. Plasmius _sounded_ like a ghost name, but it wasn’t one he’d heard before. Had a ghost been in repeated contact with their son without them realizing?

Well, it wouldn’t be _impossible_ , he supposed. There might’ve been moments when Phantom went unnoticed, when he wasn’t fighting. He easily could’ve met with other ghosts during those times.

“Yeah!” Danny nodded, leaning back a little as he lifted off of the ground, floating like he’d always done so. Jack, with pain in his heart, added another strike to his “Danny actually being a ghost” list. Floating came naturally to ghosts, to ectoplasmic beings, not gravity-bound humans. “He’s the other half-ghost I mentioned! But like I said, he’s a jerk, so he refuses to tell me much about it. Most of the stuff I know I figured out myself, or some things I was told by other ghosts.”

“Sweetie… Don’t you think those other ghosts might’ve lied to you?” Maddie made a complicated face, clearly trying to get Danny to figure out the truth slowly. Without having to break his heart directly. “You don’t exactly get on well with them, after all.”

Danny shook his head. “Nah. I mean-- You’re right, I don’t get along with most of the ghosts, but that’s not… There’s no point in them lying about this. Believe me, it was already _pretty clear_ that I was only half ghost before I ever even _met_ another ghost. And I’ve got allies – friends – among them too, and they… they wouldn’t lie to me about this.”

Light flashed, blinding with all the snow around them. Danny landed easily, his sneakers sinking into the snow. The snow, which hadn’t been present in Phantom’s hair, was still in Danny’s. Still a mix of black and white.

“I mean, I was always confused why no one connected the dots before. I mean, most people aren’t looking to connect a human identity to Phantom, but I figured that you two would figure it out sooner or later.” He shrugged easily, even if his expression didn’t match the casualness of the motion. “But based on your confusion, I guess you two didn’t think it was possible? Or, uh, still don’t think that it’s possible, I guess. But I promise you, it’s true. I’m half ghost, and half human.”

Jack and Maddie shared another uncertain look. They didn’t just _think_ it was impossible, they _knew_. Years and years of research into ghosts, into ghostly illnesses and the effects of ectoplasm on the human body, it all taught them one thing: you couldn’t combine life and death in one body. One couldn’t be alive and dead, living and ghost, at the same time.

“Danny,” Maddie finally said, voice pained. “Please, just listen to us.”

“No!” he snapped back, his eyes turning a vicious acid green, their glow casting eerie shadows on his face. “ _You_ listen to _me_! You’re always acting like you know _so much_ about ghosts, but you don’t! You never listened to me as Phantom, when I tried to tell you that I was good, and you’re not listening to me _now_ , when I’m telling you that I’m okay!”

“You _are_ okay, Danny,” Jack tried, gently, holding up his hands. “Ghost or not, you’re still our son, and you’re still _you_.”

But Danny vigorously shook his head. “No, you need to listen to me! I’m not _dead_ , and I’m not a full ghost! And if you refuse to believe me because of your _damn_ research, then-- then--”

He halted suddenly, eyes growing wide, the green leeching out. So soft it was barely a whisper, he said, “Your research…”

Again, Jack shared an uncertain look with Maddie. But before they could come to any conclusion, any discussion, Danny stepped forward, towards them.

Jerkily, he stuck out one of his bare hands. Pulled back his sleeve to bare his wrist.

“Test it,” he said, voice flat. “Your research says that ghosts can’t replicate a heartbeat, no matter what, right? So test my pulse.”

Jack licked his lips uncertainly, then pulled one of his gloves off. Slowly, he put the massive fingers to his son’s wrist. He knew what he would feel, of course. There would be no pulse. Because his son… his son was dead. A ghost. And ghosts didn’t have heartbeats, no matter what they believed.

A thump. Jack froze.

Another thump. And then another. A steady, if somewhat slow, rhythm.

“No way,” Maddie gasped, and he easily moved when she shoved him aside. She laid her own fingers on Danny’s wrist, and must’ve felt the same, because she grew wide-eyed.

“Uh,” Danny said, his other hand rubbing his neck, “Surprise?”


End file.
